More on installation of 7.1. We decided to not deploy SL 7.1
Down loaded the nice serial manual from RH site. Well written, and everything works as stated. There still does not seem to be a way to get a simple Ethernet connection. Error message is "NO Connection" We started out with a working box running SL 5.11. Since all of our users gave it a thumbs down and did not do not want this OS - the vote was unanimous. The Ethernet install failure was the a show stopper. Installations we tried were the "standard", "automatic etc. Last night was the 16Th time we tried to install it and make some sense of it. So far we have tried about every thing and finally let it do a standard install on the OS disk. It didn't improve anything. Made you think of Windows 7 - Bill computer on this time its big Red's computer. 1. When looking at the / there were two partitioned /boot, /home & / and that was it. If you do a "df" -n on look at the installed stuff it is just a bunch a numbers and no clue as to what they all did. No /var, /opt, /tmp and others we use on other disks were no where to be found. Just a series of characters - no meaning. 2. We tried to load a couple of apps we use some are home grown, some are purchased, cad packages did not want to install. We ordered VMWare so we could install some variants of Windows for special stuff and use our file system layout. Down loaded it on another system but have not installed it due to Ethernet problem. 3. We decided to just reload 5.11 hook up other disks and forget till SL 8.1 comes out sometime. We could not install a previous OS . It seams that SL 7.1 has written something on the Track 00 of disk that it was installed on we cannot see it but it prevents you from backing to a prior OS version. Once you install 7.1 you have been Intercourrsed. 4. We need a way to gracefully remove SL 7.1 if we can't then we will have to do a low level format on disk. One of the guys suggested that we take the disk out and put it on fence post in south forty and he would loan me his twelve Gage. Just because a low level format takes so much time. 5. We have invested about 16 hours on various installs at the shop rate and that is a lot of money spent for a Zero gain. Dan remarked that it is so secure that even as root you could do nothing. Reminded him of a 10 Ton Steel safe full of trash at 15 K ft. below the surface, secure but effectively worthless. 6. One of the major birches is how do you tun off the goofy sound when you manually step back too far. Can you imagine 50 of these noises going off at the same time. This is below first grade stuff and needs to be removed. The last thing you need in a machine shop is a surprise when some one is running a mill, lathe, power sheer, drill press. One of disturbing trend is that everyone likes to use the word "Wizard" I am old enough to have watched Mr. Wizard in the 50's and the usual Wizard experiment blew up in our faces. A word that should be "forbidden" in software is "Wizard" and one other that I can't remember that is used in Windows and stuff I have seen in Red Hat. I need a way to uninstall 7.1 from our test system. One way that was suggested was to load Windows 7. Ouch. We have been using Unix since 79 on a PDP8, a Convex super computer, Sun Super Server a 16 processor Server, and for the last 10 years We have been using SL Starting with SL 4.1 Linux. Tried to use Susi, Slackware & others that were around. and all had major deficiencies. So here we are with SL5.11 and some boxes @ SL 6.4. They all work together and the network was easy and the video was excellent. Thank all of you for your help over the years. Will go back to sleep till SL 8.1 comes along. Hope its before 5.11 support is ended. Larry Linder
